The present invention relates to a universal battery pack charger which can be adjustably adapted for battery packs of different size or dimension with ease. The present charger is equipped with a battery pack mounting seat which is inserted in a receiving cavity of a charger case and is provided with a stop flange at one side thereof and is provided with a vertically adjustable slide member confined in a slide track disposed at the neighboring side of the stop flange; onto the slide member having a mono-track projection disposed thereon is mounted a pair of sliding terminal seats on each of which is disposed a vertical and a horizontal probe pin. The position of each sliding terminal seat can be adjusted by sliding the same on the projection so as to make the present charger adapted to batteries of different size and dimension accordingly. To further hold a located battery pack in place, an abutment plate having a vertical abutment member is slidably fixed on the charger case so as to permit battery packs of different size or dimension or type to be securedly retained.
Recently portable electrical appliances have been prevalently employed everywhere, such as video cameras, walkie-talkies, wireless phones, motion phones and electrically driven model toys, each appliance is powered by a rechargeable battery pack specially designed for each purpose, resulting in different sizes or dimensions and various voltages.
To get those different battery packs recharged, an individual charger is specifically developed to comply with each respective battery pack, and no universal charger is provided to facilitate a person having a number of portable electrical appliances to get the rechargeable battery packs charged with one single charger.
A prior art charger has been developed to effect the purpose, it is particularly designed for a number of like battery packs which are closely similar in their ways of securing to a charger. This kind of charger is equipped with one or a number of common fixing mounts each of which is provided with a couple of terminals in correspondence to the input and output terminals 10 of a specific battery pack, as shown in FIG. 1 so as to make the charger adapted to battery packs of various type.
This conventional charger is complex in structure and relatively expensive and can only be applied to a few chargers available in the consumers' market. To find a way of development of a universal charger for all kinds of battery pack, the present inventor has summarized the common features of all the available battery packs given as below:
1.Each battery pack is comprised of a number of series connected unit cells; for instance, a 6 V Ni-Cd battery pack is made up of five 1.2 V Ni-Cd unit cells series connected to each other; the unit cells are packed together by a plastic cover, but each unit cell is packed in a metallic cover which can be attracted by a magnet. PA1 2. The shape and size of each battery pack may be different from each other, but the bottom thereof is made in a plane form which can be sucked in place by a plurality of sucking disks. PA1 3. In spite of the dimension of each battery pack being different, the pack can be secured in place by a buckle belt or by a retaining block to a plane. PA1 4. The terminals of general battery packs are different in shape and positioned at various places, but they are generally located at the sides or the underside thereof.
Based on these common features of all the available chargers, the present inventor has designed a universal charger which can secure any battery pack in place and get the same electrically charged with ease.